Li Xian did not look back to see what the man was about to do. Instead, he seized the brief moment when the pipe steadied to slide farther down, alternately planting his feet on the iron rings at the joints. He soon descended several more meters.
As he moved, he gauged the distance by eye. Once he confirmed that a fall from his current height would probably no longer kill him, he relaxed a little and finally looked up at the Attic, where there had been no movement.
At some point during that stretch of silence, the man had stepped outside the window.
He simply stood there without moving. He did not look as though he intended to step onto the iron pipe beside him and pursue Li Xian, yet for some reason, Li Xian's heart lurched.
It would take me about... another half a minute to reach the ground.
The man no longer had a weapon, and finding another one at such short notice was unrealistic. Even if he climbed onto the steel pipe now, he would not be able to catch up.
Every sign suggested that Li Xian was now more or less safe, yet for some reason, a thread of unease still hung in his heart.
As he descended farther, the high wall surrounding the residential complex blocked his view of the Attic window. He would have to reach the ground and move farther away before he could see what the man was doing again.
Five seconds...
Ten seconds...
Li Xian's soles landed on the iron rings one after another as time ticked by. The air around him seemed to have frozen into an unnatural silence, broken only by the creaking of the pipe as it shook with his movements.
It almost made Li Xian feel as